


Stryker

by RosemarysBabysitter (TashaElizabeth)



Series: Goretober Prompts [19]
Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 10:00:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12579232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TashaElizabeth/pseuds/RosemarysBabysitter
Summary: Everything Luke Harper's learned in life has brought him here. Goretober Prompt: Knives





	Stryker

Luke’s daddy taught him how to get things done. When the storms hit in ‘85, Luke helped rebuild the house and got splinters in his hands doing it. When Mère died the next year, he learned how to drive the boat and he could go into town by himself not long after. He learned how to fish off the front porch and was cleaning his own catches from the start. 

To clean catfish, and he almost always caught catfish, takes nothing but a good knife, a flat surface, and a steady hand. Luke had a long skinny knife just for the job. Sometimes he’d fiddle with that knife while he sat on the porch watching his line. He was never entirely comfortable with the feel of the tiny teeth against the tips of his fingers. Luke was the kind of kid who couldn’t stay away from a flare of fear or promise of pain. He would balance the knife on his fingertips and watch the serrations press into the surface of his skin.

You clean catfish alive, or at least, that’s how Luke’s daddy taught him to do it. First you cut off the head and that was always the hardest cut, not just because the fish was flapping and writhing but also because you had to cut through the ribcage. Luke often had a take a breath before this cut, though he was careful to not let his daddy catch on. That kind of hesitation would require a lesson or two and Luke didn’t relish the idea of them. Sometimes when his daddy was out, he would find a rock and bash the fish’s brain in before he started to cut. That felt better to him. Luke always considered himself a blunt object.

He learned how to make things from his mother’s brother, who did it for a living. His uncle made horseshoes mostly, but he also made hunting knives. He taught Luke how to do these things too, because country people just do that with kids, shove on any bit of knowledge they might know to the next generation. Luke lived with his uncle from fifteen on, not because his daddy couldn’t mind him, but because it was a twenty minute walk to the high school as opposed to a two hour boat ride. Luke kinda liked high school, though he was smart enough not to mention it to anyone. He was taller than all of his teachers, could fight like an alligator and never met a math book he couldn’t whip, given time and paper to work through it. It was likely this combination of talents that kept any of the other kids from mentioning the fact that he only owned a handful of shirts and wore the same jeans for weeks on end, even when they were ash covered and smelled like charcoal fire.

You learn how to smith by making yourself all the things you need to smith. Luke’s uncle provided iron and steel and charcoal but Luke made all the tools. Sometimes he went dizzy when the temperature got too high and had to rush outside to pant and guzzle water from the hose. He made tongs, stamps, hammers, chisels and when they proved too poorly designed he made them again. He got pretty good at it. He could make buck knives, and folding knives and throwing knives. He could handle the sweat and the heat of the forge and he didn’t have to steady his nerves before he brought his arm down, Smithing was hard work and after a few months of it Luke had muscles on his shoulders and arms that scared away grown men and made the girls at school giggle behind their hands. 

Bray taught him how to think. There was a white tent on the outskirts of town and Luke went there to watch the man speak. Bray made him feel things, even that first time, things that he didn’t know he’d always felt. Bray made him see the the patches on the things other people had taught him. He could feel the way he felt when he balanced the knife on his fingers, when he brought down the rock, when he went dizzy, and when he ran the cold water over the back of his neck to keep from fainting.

Bray brought him in. Bray expanded until he was all of Luke’s world. Got so high and fine and beautiful that Luke couldn’t see anything but his truth. Then, in a moment, he shoved Luke away.

Bray was a knife, slick and targeted. Treated with heat and oil so that he was strong all the way through. Bray could slide between fibers, could cut you out of your family with a glance. 

Luke made himself a hammer.


End file.
